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China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

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Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s almost like more than one country can do horrible things. Who’d have thought? It doesn’t make the situation in China any better to point out that other countries have also done bad things.

I believe the point is that people on this website are selective in their outrage.

No, it's just that we are discussing here just one country, see the topic title.

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you quite aware of how much blood is spilled when China goes through political turmoil? Aside from the world wars, a huge chunk of the top 10 bloodiest conflicts in history are Chinese internal conflicts. You're asking people who understand very well that standing up for a new government is going to be extremely costly. In the meantime, you want to deprive them of work. Ever wonder how those two things are connec…

Sure, so let them just continue to commit atrocities.

Why won't 350 million American citizens do something about their own government first, before engaging in moral grandstanding in respect to other countries? No, this doesn't mean just getting rid of Trump - the entire political spectrum is complicit in millions of deaths every decade.

US calls itself a "Democracy", so you're supposed to be more empowered to make a change than an average Chinese citizen.

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#243

To those that believe that they would not have turned a blind eye during WWII to the systematic extermination of Jews, the current generation has been given a similar challenge. Where is your cancel-culture now? How will our children think of us?

I am of Indian origin but grew up in China. If you want to know how its got to this state I can tell you my point of view. Back in ~2007 I saw the first brush of Uighur Han tensions. My family and I were stuck in a traffic jam in a very crowded market place. We were in car with a driver. At some point my mom, who used to be a journalist, spotted a pickpocket. This pickpocket was armed with a knife and was going about pick pocketing people. There was a police patrol around, however it was clear that he was trying to steer clear of trouble with the pickpocket. When my mom saw this her inner indian-journalist/activist was immediately re-awakened. She was about to open the door and take on the negligent police and pickpocket. At this point our driver immediately locked the door and told her to stop. He explained that the man was an Uighur and the police just did not want to run in to his gang. Later on we learnt that many Uighurs would leave their home towns for second and first tier cities in China in the hope of finding work. However due to linguistic and cultural barriers they would inevitably be unable to find work and hence fall to other ways to make money. Unfortunately when you are a minority if one person of you're kind does something wrong, your entire minority comes under scrutiny. There was a point in time when news of mass stabbings by Uighurs was becoming a weekly phenomenon. The one sited on Wikipedia is a stabbing at train stations, but I remember some which even involved children in kindergartens and pre-schools. Naturally, the local population will expect something. China may not be a democracy but their government has a social contract with the han majority to make sure they deliver. All of this was happening around the time that Xi was slowly taking the reigns from the then president Hu Jin Tao. Xi's rise was not particularly clean and his establishment of "anti-corruption" bureaus was most certainly a good way of him to get rid of opposing politicians. To prove his metal he needed to act. One of the things that was evident was the Uighurs needed "education" so they could work. For all purposes, the average Chinese would back this (heck even I would think that it'd be a good thing to help disadvantaged people come out of poverty). The only problem with "education" in China is that its not always what the rest of the world would consider humane. As a child, I had a piano teacher would beat me if I played the wrong notes. When my parents found out they of course flipped shit and immediately fired her, but I'm pretty sure other children were subjected to similar treatment and their parents would support such treatment. It is only very recently that the average Chinese parent actually started to consider child abuse by teachers as wrong. Hence it was not difficult for the CCP to recruit a group of people who sincerely believe they are doing social work to design, build and run these camps. To add to the fire you of course had western media which would report terrorism acts that were predominantly muslim (seems like american media thinks white shooters are not terrorists but anyone muslim is, and yes, Chinese do read western media its not North Korea). Hence the local Chinese also would be lead to believe that stamping out Islam is what the rest of the world supports. Towards the end of the stay there were a few times that the police stopped myself and my dad because we looked Uighur, but once we told them we were foreigners they became very jovial and let us carry on with our work. I don't know how cancel culture will solve this. In fact I don't how the world will solve this without causing more divides and hurt to an already very polarized world. But I do know one thing, it is important that we remain kind to one another irregardless of race, language or religion.

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#244

To those that believe that they would not have turned a blind eye during WWII to the systematic extermination of Jews, the current generation has been given a similar challenge. Where is your cancel-culture now? How will our children think of us?

What's happening there is despicable. But to the best of my knowledge there's no extermination. There aren't hundreds of thousands being shot or gassed. It looks more like a "cultural genocide", the kind we saw exercised against the Tibetans. I understand the emotions over this issue, and I don't think the holocaust is beyond comparison, but in this instance the comparison falls short.

The reports coming from inside the camps suggest that the death rate is very high, even without systematic executions.

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#245

To those that believe that they would not have turned a blind eye during WWII to the systematic extermination of Jews, the current generation has been given a similar challenge. Where is your cancel-culture now? How will our children think of us?

But what if it wasn't actually true? Just like most of the reporting leading up to the major wars of the past many decades.

Good thing then, that there are solutions other than war.

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#246
post #5

To those that believe that they would not have turned a blind eye during WWII to the systematic extermination of Jews, the current generation has been given a similar challenge. Where is your cancel-culture now? How will our children think of us?

Americans killed a million muslims and destroyed their homeland. China imprisoned a million muslims and put them in factories. Stop being so dramatic.

Whatabout the time Nazis killed millions of Jews? Imprisoning your minorities is practically doing them a favor!

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#247
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us don't have much power. I denounced it online several times, that's all I can do. People like Lebron James, who thinks of himself like a freedom fighter, when he criticized China he ended up saying he was misinformed and he wasn't educated about the issue. He loves the money coming from China more than anything else. I want him to be reminded by this. He put his millions before human lives, just like some n…

No, you have power to actually influence at least people in your circle. At least on a personal level, you can start looking at the place of origin of products and be ready to pay more for an alternative. There is a subreddit where people will help you out with recommendations as well.

Can you share the subreddit? I would be interested in trying to do this

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#249
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NBA players choose BLM for their protests and you choose China, I don’t see the problem. Blaming them for international policy seems a little naive.

It sounds like you may not be aware that the NBA has been actively and specifically blocking criticism of China. It sounds like currently they've reversed that policy on at least what custom jerseys they'll print, but only after a lot of pressure. The NBA is not neutrally "permitting" their players to protest things if they happen to want to, they have taken an extremely active role in what political actions are and…

They'd block BLM support as well if they could get away with it.

Re: China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

#250
post #10

To those that believe that they would not have turned a blind eye during WWII to the systematic extermination of Jews, the current generation has been given a similar challenge. Where is your cancel-culture now? How will our children think of us?

Some of us don't have much power. I denounced it online several times, that's all I can do. People like Lebron James, who thinks of himself like a freedom fighter, when he criticized China he ended up saying he was misinformed and he wasn't educated about the issue. He loves the money coming from China more than anything else. I want him to be reminded by this. He put his millions before human lives, just like some n…

> People like Lebron James, who thinks of himself like a freedom fighter, when he criticized China he ended up saying

Or China is more powerful than you - or he - thought.

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